28 Best Apple Watch Faces in 2024

With the launch of watchOS 10 and its new features, the Apple Watch has even more faces and complications to choose from. Apple provides a diverse library of watch faces, many of which are geared toward specific situations and occasions, and the choices can be overwhelming. The good news is that some of the best Apple Watch faces are already pre-installed on your smartwatch, and you can also personalize it further with Smart Stack in watchOS 10. In this article, we’ll review some of the best Apple Watch faces we love.

Note: The faces shown below are not in any particular order and are solely based on our preference. Check the complete list to find the ones you like the most. Face images by Apple.

The best Apple Watch faces at a glance

Face	Customizable feature	Complications
Palette	Colors	4
Peanuts	Style, color	No
Metropolitan	Font of the numerals on the dial	Up to 4
Lunar	Second hand color, analogue & digital switch	4
Playtime	Background	No
Astronomy	Phases	Up to 4
Portraits	Classic, modern, or round design	2
Infograph	Color	Up to 8
Contour	Color, style, dial color	2
California	Color, numerals, dials	Yes
Nike Analog	Color, style	Yes
Siri	Color	2
GMT	Color	Up to 4
Fire and Water	Color, style	3
Count Up	Color	Up to 4
Activity	Color, style	Yes
Breathe	Style	Yes
Simple	Color, style	Up to 4
Motion	Collections	Up to 3
Meridian	Color, style	Up to 4
Chronograph	Color, timescale	Yes
Stripes	Color, number of stripes, direction of stripes	Yes
Photos	Color filters, content, time position	Yes
Modular Compact	Color, dial	Up to 6
Modular Ultra	Color, bezel, style, night mode	Up to 7
Solar Dial	Dial	4
Memoji	Color, style	Yes
Kaleidoscope	Color, emoticons, memoji	Yes

How did we choose these Apple Watch faces?

Whether you are wearing the popular Apple Watch 7 or Apple Watch 8, the more affordable Apple Watch SE 2, or the powerful Apple Watch Ultra, we have taken into consideration the following:

• Unique features: Each face offers distinct functionalities, such as the ability to display detailed weather updates or track specific health metrics, enhancing the overall user experience.
• Number of complications: The number of complications available on the face determines how much information and functionality can be seen at a glance, ranging from basic time-telling to advanced data display.
• Customization options: Customization allows users to personalize their watch face, changing colors, styles, and the types of information shown, making it uniquely theirs.
• How good the face looks: Aesthetics play a crucial role, as a visually appealing watch face can complement your style and make using the watch more enjoyable.
• watchOS version compatibility: Ensuring the watch face is compatible with your version of watchOS is essential for smooth functionality and access to the latest features.
• Any other interesting details you may enjoy: Additional features, like animated elements, interactive widgets, or special themes for holidays and events, add a layer of fun and practicality to the watch face.

1. Palette

• Highlight: Three-color screen
• Customizable feature: Colors
• Complications: 4
• Compatibility: watchOS 10

New in watchOS 10, the Palette face uses three distinct colors, which can be customized as you wish. The four complications offer a minimalistic and beautiful way to have your information at a glance in each corner. You don’t have to choose different colors for this Apple Watch face; you can just select a color palette with similar ones you like.

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2. Peanuts

• Highlight: Snoopy animation
• Customizable feature: Style | color
• Complications: No
• Compatibility: watchOS 10

Also new in watchOS 10 is the Peanuts Apple Watch face, which will show an animation every time you wake up the smartwatch. When you activate the Sleep Mode, Snoopy will also sleep on his doghouse. You will see the characters interacting with the watch in different situations. It’s a fun face that everyone can love!

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3. Metropolitan

• Highlight: Minimalist design for casual and formal environments
• Customizable feature: Font of the numerals on the dial
• Complications: Up to 4
• Compatibility: watchOS 9 and later

Metropolitan is one of the new Apple Watch faces that appeared with watchOS 9, featuring a minimalist design with support for up to 4 complications around the corners. It has a casual and formal feel and can be displayed in any situation, like in a work meeting or hanging out with friends.

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4. Lunar

• Highlight: Different lunar calendars
• Customizable features: Second hand color | Analogue & digital switch
• Complications: 4
• Compatibility: watchOS 9 and later

Lunar came with watchOS 9 and can keep track of both the lunar calendar and the Gregorian calendar—and it can even depict the relationship between the two. Moreover, you can also choose Chinese, Hebrew, and Islamic calendars and can support up to 4 complications. It’s a beautiful Apple Watch face despite showing a lot of information, which can overwhelm users who want a more minimalist approach.

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5. Playtime

• Highlight: Cute and fun
• Customizable feature: Background
• Complications: No
• Compatibility: watchOS 9 and later

Playtime is not only for kids, even if it looks like it. This cool Apple Watch face created in Apple’s collaboration with Chicago-based illustrator and artist Joi Fulton is perfect for people of any age. The Digital Crown can be rotated to change the background, and the faces of the characters will react to you if you tap on them.

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6. Astronomy

• Highlight: Real-time model of the Earth, Moon, and our Solar System
• Customizable feature: Phases
• Complications: Up to 4
• Compatibility: watchOS 9 and later

This is one of the best Apple Watch faces revamped for watchOS 9. It displays a real-time 3D model of the Earth, the Moon, or our Solar System. The Earth shows you the transition between day and night, and you can also follow the moon phases or choose the solar system view to see the position of the planets on any day of the year. Rotating the Digital Crown will also show the passage of time so that you can track the alignment of the planets or the next full moon.

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7. Portraits

• Highlight: Highlights the photo’s subject with a 3D effect
• Customizable feature: Classic, modern, or round design
• Complications: 2

Portraits is a beautiful Apple Watch face that lets you choose any portrait mode photo as the background of your smartwatch. You can set two complications in the middle and the bottom and rotate the Digital Crown to bring the photo’s subject forward. But the real thing about it is that it creates a cool 3D effect with perspective motion and impressive results.

Portraits came with watchOS 8 but got an update with watchOS 9 to highlight the depth effect on photos of dogs, cats, and landscapes. The editing mode can also be used to add a tint to the background layers of the picture.

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8. Infograph

This watch face is available only on Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 4 and later, featuring up to eight rich, full-color complications and subdials. You can also check the weather on the top right with current, minimum, and maximum temperatures on show. The middle offers shortcuts to common apps, such as Activity and Music, but you can cut these any way you want.

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9. Contour

• Highlight: Current hour highlight
• Customizable features: Color | Style | Dial color
• Complications: 2
• Compatibility: Only Apple Watch Series 7 and 8

It can’t get curvier than this! Contour boasts the curvy case of the Apple Watch 7 and 8. The numerals will fit into the edge of the display using a custom font and morph in size to reflect the current hour. It’s a modern Apple Watch face that will look beautiful wherever you are.

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10. California

• Highlight: Half Roman and half Arabic numerals
• Customizable features: Color | Numerals | Dials
• Complications: Yes

The California Apple Watch face has been an all-around favorite since its release on watchOS 6. It has an elegant design, with either a square or round face, and resembles a traditional, familiar watch face. You can add as much data as you wish or leave it minimal. The complications are entirely customizable, and the time display can be altered for shape and numeral design.

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11. Nike Analog

• Highlight: Large numerals
• Customizable features: Color | Style
• Complications: Yes

This Watch face comes from the collaboration of Apple and Nike, and it comes in five variations: Analog, Bounce, Compact, Digital, and Hybrid. Although the five of them have their own pros, we have chosen the most eye-catching one, the Analog, which shows the time in large numerals with a unique and sporty style.

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12. Siri

• Highlight: Siri suggestions
• Customizable feature: Color
• Complications: 2

If you use Siri, you can also have it as a face on your Apple Watch. It will show you cards with information for the day that the software thinks you could use, like the weather, upcoming events, the traffic on your way home, and additional data. You can set up two complications for the first and third-party data sources. It’s an excellent companion if you use Apple’s voice assistant daily.

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13. GMT

• Highlight: Set up a secondary timezone
• Customizable feature: Color 
• Complications: Up to 4

The watchOS 7 updates came with the GMT watch face, enabling you to set a secondary timezone. By default, you get the Rolex vibes from the watch, but the colors are customizable. The Apple Watch face is available only on the Apple Watch SE and Apple Watch Series 4 and later. It may come in handy for international travelers or those who work with colleagues around the globe.

GMT face has two dials: a 12-hour inner dial that shows your local time and a 24-hour outer dial that lets you track another time zone. You can choose from a list of city names or add one from your iPhone’s world clock list.

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14. Fire and Water

• Highlight: Responsive animation
• Customizable features: Color | Style
• Complications: 3

One of the most visually powerful faces we’ve seen for a smartwatch. This Watch face looks perfect on Apple’s Retina display, and it animates every time you raise your wrist or tap the screen. You can choose fire and water or have them both side by side.

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15. Count up

• Highlight: Track elapsed time
• Customizable feature: Color
• Complications: Up to 4

Count Up offers the easiest way to transform your Apple Watch into a stopwatch and track elapsed time with up to four complications on edge and the possibility to change the ring’s color. It’s available with Apple Watch SE or Series 4 and later.

To start timing, tap the main 12-hour dial to align the market on the outer bezel with the minute hand, turn the Digital Crown to set the length of time, and finally, tap Start.

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16. Activity

• Highlight: Fitness tracker
• Customizable features: Color | Style
• Complications: Yes

The Activity face is the favorite of fitness enthusiasts and works with activity rings. The Move ring, represented by the red bar, shows how many calories you’ve burned until now. The green and blue rings show how many activity minutes you’ve completed so far and how frequently you’ve stood up and moved about for at least a minute.

In addition, it can also show you the hours you’ve pushed if you are in a wheelchair. With up to three complications, this is one of the best Apple watch faces, and it was modernized with watchOS 9.

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17. Breathe

• Highlight: Mindful breathing
• Customizable feature: Style
• Complications: Yes

Breathe is a simple, effective, and beautiful Apple Watch face that encourages you to breathe mindfully. It is a useful tool to access at any time and can help you relax and slow down the day-to-day hush wherever you are. To start, just tap the display.

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18. Simple

• Highlight: Minimalist
• Customizable features: Color | Style
• Complications: Up to 4

As you can imagine, this is the simplest Apple Watch face you can find out there. You can add complications, but if you want the most minimalist design, it can be better to turn them off. In any case, Simple lets you choose the dial design and add the hours’ markers.

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19. Motion

• Highlight: Aesthetic and relaxing 
• Customizable feature: Collections
• Complications: Up to 3

The Motion face is a modern app that can react to your touch, and it has three collections to choose from. The Butterfly collection has 25 different species that move like real butterflies. Every time you raise your wrist, a butterfly will appear. The Flower collection has nine other animated flowers blooming. The third, the Jellyfish collection, has six different species of jellyfish and shows a different one every time you raise your wrist.

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20. Meridian

• Highlight: Design and function
• Customizable features: Color | Style
• Complications: Up to 4

Meridian came with watchOS 6. It offers a great combination of design and function with an analog look and up to four complications in the middle of the dial. The clean layout on this face gives you an at-a-glance overview of important data you can access immediately. The complications include Date, Weather, Air Quality Index, and Activity, and the dial comes in black or white with numerous accent colors.

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21. Chronograph

• Highlight: Precision over time
• Customizable features: Color | Timescale
• Complications: Yes

With this face, you can tap the bezel around the 12-hour dial, and the watch will transform into a chronograph that measures your speed based on the time traveled over a fixed distance.

You can change to different dials, including 60, 30, 6, and 3-second timers, which you can start by tapping the dial and hitting the green button. This face was one of the best Apple Watch faces on watchOS 7.

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22. Stripes

• Highlight: Superbly customizable
• Customizable features: Color | Number of stripes | Direction of stripes
• Complications: Only in the full-screen version

Stripes, new with watchOS 7, is a highly customizable watch face. You can set the number of stripes from two to nine and re-order the colors in whatever sequence you want. It is also possible to rotate the position of the stripes so they are horizontal, vertical, or at an angle from 0 degrees to 345 degrees at 15-degree increments. Like many Apple Watch faces, the full-screen version of the face does not accept complications. However, the circular version does.

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23. Photos

• Highlight: Custom photo
• Customizable features: Color filters | Content | Time position
• Complications: Yes

Not convinced about any of the faces? How about using your photos instead? To do so, open the Apple Watch app and go to Face Gallery. Scroll down until you reach Photos and tap Favorites. Here, you can sync an album, choose individual photos, or include up to 10 in a carousel. Go to My Watch > Photos > Synced Album to find your synced album. Sync a Favorites album to only show your best pictures. You can also limit the number of stored images and apply color filters to your photos directly using the Edit feature.

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24. Modular Compact

• Highlight: Pack in reams of information
• Customizable features: Color | Dial
• Complications: Up to 6

The new Modular Compact face focuses on data. With six complications, the three icons at the bottom can be changed to common contacts so you can make calls straight from the watch. Corner complications are out, but you can use the central modular unit to show information like heart rate data or commuting alerts.

If you want even more information than the Utility face, then the Modular face can be your choice. Modular Compact, Modular, and X-Large faces were updated on watchOS 9 to include a wide range of colors and gradients to match your mood when customizing your Apple Watch.

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25. Modular Ultra

• Highlight: Automatic Night Mode
• Customizable features: Color | Bezel | Style | Night Mode
• Complications: 7

The Modular Ultra Apple Watch face is designed for users who demand high levels of customization and information accessibility. Its design is both functional and stylish. It offers a high degree of visibility and ease of use, making it ideal for busy professionals, outdoor enthusiasts, and tech-savvy users. In addition, the Modular Ultra face includes practical features like Night Mode, which turns all elements on the watch face red to help preserve night vision.

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26. Solar Dial

• Highlight: Solar
• Customizable feature: Dial
• Complications: 4

The Solar Dial beautiful face features a 24-hour circular dial that tracks the sun and its movement around your location. If you rotate the Digital Crown, you’ll be able to see the sun’s position throughout the day. The face also displays the twilight, sunset, and dawn on the watch, and you can tap on it to see the day’s length, which can be pretty useful if you plan to go outdoors.

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27. Memoji

• Highlight: Quirky emoticons on your watch face
• Customizable features: Color | Style
• Complications: Yes

If you have a Memoji on your iPhone, you can port them onto your Apple Watch. However, if you fancy it, you can have one of the now-familiar stock Memoji characters and customize the small info panel at the bottom. This face includes all the Animoji characters and any Memoji you have created, letting you choose from various accent colors and characters.

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28. Kaleidoscope

• Highlight: Relaxing Patterns 
• Customizable features: Color | Emoticons | Memoji
• Complications: Yes

Kaleidoscope is a beautiful Apple Watch face with patterns that intertwine and change throughout the day. It’s also designed for relaxation purposes. When you turn the Digital Crown, the patterns move; the faster you turn the crown, the faster they will. Needless to say, you can use this to get yourself into a relaxed state if you’ve had a stressful day.

How to add a new Apple Watch face

1. Tap on the Watch face firmly.
2. Swipe left until you reach a window that reads New.
3. Tap on the Plus (+) icon.
4. Turn the Digital Crown or swipe with your finger to scroll through the list of available watch faces.
5. Tap the face to add it to your Apple Watch.

How to customize an Apple Watch face

1. Press your watch face until it shrinks down.
2. Tap Edit on the face you want to customize and swipe to either side to select the feature to be changed. Turn the Digital Crown to choose a new customization for that feature.
3. Swipe to the left-most screen to customize face complications, and turn the Digital Crown to edit it.
4. Press the Digital Crown when you are done to save the changes.

It’s worth noting that you can also create and set custom Apple Watch faces with third-party apps. Read our article on the best Apple Watch face apps you can get for this purpose.

How to delete an Apple Watch face

1. Press the current watch face until it shrinks down.
2. Swipe up to that face.
3. Tap Remove.
4. Press the Digital Crown to return.

How to share an Apple Watch face

After you have added or edited your Apple Watch and its complications, you can also share it with your contacts, as long as both of you have Apple Watch Series 3 or later or Apple Watch SE with watchOS 7 or later.

From your Apple Watch

1. Display the face you want to share on your Apple Watch.
2. Touch and hold the display.
3. Tap the Share button.
4. Select a contact.
5. Tap the name of the face.
6. Specify if you want to include data in each complication.
7. Tap Done.
8. Tap Create message if you want to add a note.
9. Tap Send.

From your iPhone

• Open the Apple Watch app.
• Select a face in the My Watch or Face Gallery tabs.
• Tap the Share button.
• Choose the app you want to share it with.

What are Apple Watch complications?

Complications on the Apple Watch are small additional pieces of visual data that can display a wide range of information, such as weather conditions, activity progress, calendar events, stock prices, heart rate, and more.

They offer a convenient way to glance at important data without opening specific apps on your smartwatch.

Some Apple Watch faces allow for several complications, while others are more limited or even can’t display them at all, such as in the case of the Minimalistic face.

If you like to have a good amount of information on your smartwatch, make sure to choose a face that can include several complications.

👉 Learn more: 20 Best Apple Watch Complications in 2024

Why are they called complicacions?

The term “complications” has a long history that originates in the traditional watch industry. Watchmakers used to refer to extra dials and functions that had any other function than telling the time. Complications that showed the date were the most common, although others displayed a different timezone, moon phases, or even a Tourbillon device to avoid timekeeping errors in mechanical watches.

Where can you buy an Apple Watch at a discount?

With watchOS 7, Apple opened the watch face landscape to third parties, who can now create and sell their own faces. Several Apple Watch apps offer galleries of different faces that you can add. Regardless of the face, an Apple Watch is a good investment.

On RefurbMe, we compare hundreds of refurbished Apple devices every day, including refurbished Apple Watches from Amazon, Back Market, Decluttr, and Apple itself. Our mission is to help you find the best available deals in the market, all of them with a warranty and hassle-free return policies. Here are the best Apple Watches compatible with watchOS 10 in real time to enjoy the faces you’ve seen in this article:

If you want to know more about the merchants selling them, check out our article about the 5 best places to buy an Apple Watch and learn more about everything they offer, including the testing process, shipping, and warranty.

Finally, don’t forget to check our list of the best Apple Watch accessories and the best Apple Watch apps you wish to enhance your experience with the watch even more.

👉 Learn more: How Long Do Apple Watches Last?

Good luck!